We leave Orewa this morning for Waihi Beach on the Bay of Plenty, stopping in Auckland on the way to try to get my Asus screen repaired. We stumbled across a computer repair shop when we were in Auckland last Sunday but it was shut, so we head back there only to find that it will cost about NZ$400 for parts and labour compared to $600 for a new one. So I will continue to use it for the time being, who knows it may last out the trip.
We get to Waihi around 2pm and stop at the local Woolworths – which unlike the chain that until recently existed in the UK, is a supermarket selling mainly food – to get tonight’s meal. Waihi would be a village in England, but is a sizeable town in New Zealand. The town centre is about four streets of single storey shops that look as though they could be facades on a film set. 11km down the road and we arrive at Waihi Beach, a holiday ‘resort’ which, like many NZ suburbs, looks as though it could have been lifted from The Trueman Show or Edward Sissorhands – well-manicured and well-kept but ultimately soulless. It is not a resort in the conventional sense, just holiday homes and and a handful of shops. The beach is 9 km of pristine sand and totally unspoilt – no development whatsoever, just sand dunes.